death of newspapers

The struggle to survive for small town local media is in direct correlation to the dwindling population.

In the third installment of the four part series on issues facing rural America, from Kansas Public Radio, Professor David Guth addresses the apparent, imminent demise of rural newspapers. As well as what challenges rural publishers are facing, where the decline of subscribers and advertisers is equal to a slow march towards demise.

The newscasts seem full of stories about the death of newsprint, and newsprint's replacement by technology. There seems to be fewer and fewer of us who carry the genes of string-savers of the Great Depression- those who love the way the paper feels between our fingers, and the way the pages sound as we turn them. There's a steady flow of the electronic version of the town crier- folks on little screens who type, text, or shout, gossip, advertising, facts, figures, and advertisements, even when we don't want them.